Dr. Stefan Brandle

"What do I say?" Great literature is supposed to have a catchy first line. Moby Dick starts with "Call me Ishmael." But I'm not sure that I'm up to great literature. And my name's not Ishmael. Should I write something profound? Something frivolous? What do you say about yourself in this sort of situation?

I wish to serve God in all aspects of my life. That includes my professional field and my job. All honest work is sacred -- the plumber's work is as sacred as the missionary's work -- but computer science is more than just honest work done in a sacred fashion. By building beautiful software tools, I celebrate the creativity that comes as a gift from God. Creativity is one of the "standard options" that gets included when the Bible tells us that we are created in the image of God. We get to be creative.

Computer programming is one of the more creative environments, so I constantly get to feed and exercise my inner artist. Even better, I can make a living at it. So it's not my inner starving artist. My family is glad for that.

Anna and Esther.

Speaking of family, I have one. It goes something like this:

• Wife: Christina. Canadian. Still shows slight signs of frostbite on her face. Is truly my best friend. Has done a lot of travelling in many countries. Small children (see below) do make overseas travelling trickier, but she has hit England and Japan in the last couple of years. Christina also teaches violin (Suzuki method), as well as French and German (study hard method).
• Kid #1: Anna. Also has Canadian citizenship, but no frostbite. She's an Indiana kid. Loves people. At age three, she is a big girl now.Talks constantly. I mean, constantly. Some of her conversations make me feel like I'm just a little bit out of phase. Here are two samples.
  

  Anna: Mumble mumble mumble.
  Me: Sorry, what did you say?
  Anna: No, Daddy. I was talking to myself.
  

  Anna: Esther, my toes are bigger than yours. That means that I can stay up later than you.

  Go figure.
• Kid #2: Esther. Yes, you're right about Canada and frostbite. At age two, she doesn't talk quite as much. But her "MEEEEE" when she thinks that she's about to get left out of something more than makes up for verbs and complex sentences. Right now she loves to look at a picture of barn animals and point out "baby moo", "mama moo", and "daddy moo". It works.
• Rodent control associate #1: Yellow. Yellow is a cat. And yes, Yellow happens to be that color. Yellow is a great hunter. No hunting lessons needed. In this day of increased corporate accountability, he takes his work seriously and frequently leaves us irrefutable evidence that he is not slacking when it comes to protecting us from mice, birds, and the occasional unidentifiable bit of something that happened to threaten the family. If the New York Attorney General, Elliot Spitzer, ever decides to do an audit of cat accountability, Yellow is ready. Like, not even a teensie weensie hint of anxiety. He does his job.
• Rodent control associate #2: Molly. Molly is also a cat. And he's called Molly because Molly is the name of the cat that our cool 13 year old neighbor has, so Anna (Kid #1) wanted to call this cat Molly. That was before we realized that it was a "boy kitty". Oh well, it's too late now. The cat has been named.
  Molly and Yellow are both total purr machines. You even think of looking at them and they break out into loud purring. They let my children carry them around in all sorts of strange, hard-on-a-cat's-ego positions. For instance, getting carried around over a kid's shoulder. Or even worse, carried around the yard upside down by kid #2, who is proudly explaining "kitty" to everyone in sight. But these are exceptional cats. They are secure in their sense of "felinicity" and can hold up their heads and stare down the other neighborhood cats.
• Me: Well, yes, I guess I'm in the family too. I was born in Angola, Africa. I've lived in Angola, Germany, Portugal, South Africa, Reunion and Mauritius (both in the Indian Ocean) and of course, here in the USA. I've been a church organist, play classical guitar, and play a pretty mean radio (NPR, mostly). My undergraduate degree was philosophy. It was a lot of fun. Had some seriously interesting conversations. However, see earlier comments about not wanting to starve. I know, I should be true to the muses and starve, but starvation is one of many things on my informal list of highly over-rated experiences. So computers looked pretty good. Plus I liked them. And for those times in my love-hate relationship with computers when the relationship is getting iffy, I go get some garden therapy. Hey, with 26 different types of tomato to taste in the garden, your computer woes sort of melt into a gentler, mellower perspective.

Links

Homepage

Questionnaire

Favorite book?

"Dune", by Frank Herbert

Most famous person you ever met?

George Miller, psychologist and author of "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information"

Favorite part about your job?

Helping people who think they can't do something to discover that they can do it.

First computer you had or used?

Used an Apple //+ my senior year in high school.

First program you wrote? In what language?

A French vocabulary tutor. Using the Basic built into ROM.

Me if I used Emacs enough?

Vim or Emacs

Vim. Maybe becoming an emacs wizard would put hair on my chest and make my beard grow to rival Richard Stallman, but I've never felt quite macho enough.

Preferred operating system?

Essentially any form of UNIX. I used to prefer BSD-style system administration, but they've all pretty much merged, morphed, and moved on to the point where it doesn't matter.

Distribution of Linux you use?

Red Hat. Need to move to Fedora, I suppose. Have used YGGDRASIL, Slackware, and probably others that I don't remember any more.

Linux windows manager you use?

The default one.

Preferred programming language?

LISP.

If you were a bit, would you be a 1 or a 0?

I think that people are way too hard on 0. Everybody wants to be the number 1, we think poorly of naught, nought, zero, null, etc. In support of the down-trodden, I proudly take my stand beside the 0.

How does your relationship with God affect the way you use computers?

It does control some behavior, like which sites I surf to. More fundamentally, I believe that the real problems and solutions in life have to do with the human heart, not education, health, technology, etc. So I believe that computers are a great tool, but they are neither the problem nor the solution to any of life's great issues.

Favorite Bible verse?

Proverbs 1:7, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline." I actually have multiple "favorite" Bible verses, but this one is a good starting point.

Favorite quote?

"Does God get sick?", from my 3-year-old daughter, Anna.

Where do you get your computer news from?

Nice email from people I never heard of. Did you know that you can get a free laptop or X-box just by filling out a form at some web page where you are guaranteed to be the likely winner? [Do I need to add a smiley face?]

What's the most prestigious thing you have done in the computer science / business field?

I was priviledged to get a whole page to myself on the Dungeon quote board one semester.

When did you first know you were interested in Computer Science? What attracted you about it?

I took a programming class and discovered that I like programming and working with computers. I also thought that maybe it might be hard to get a job with my philosophy degree.

Cat or dog person?

Cat. Big dogs slobber, small dogs yap.

Who do you admire in the industry?

Fred Brooks: Not only have his "The Mythical Man-Month" and other works taught a couple generations of computer people about the realities of project managements, but he has been one of the few to urge computer people to use their skills on ".. whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable" (Philippians 4:8).

E-mail client you use?

Netscape/Mozilla/Thunderbird, depending on what is installed on the machine I'm using. I tried being open-minded about Exchange and used it exclusively for 4 months, but it ate all my email one day. I tried all sorts of things, including the form of e-Heimlich maneouver most recommend on the web, but to no avail. I'm still a bit grumpy about the experience and haven't yet gone back to being "open-minded".

Favorite type of cheese?

Beer cheese. This has nothing to do with "beer" in the name, but all to do with the scent. Within about 30 seconds of opening a sandwich bag that contains a sandwich with beer cheese, sensitive people make a dash for the door. Aromoatically more delicate persons faint before making it to the door. On the other hand, I once had a set of librarians that got so inspired by a sandwich that I happend to unveil in their lunch room that they spontaneously performed a "charging football linesmen on their way to a certain Rose Bowl victory" immitation that would have turned any of the Big Ten teams green with envy. Fortunately, I was right by the door and was wearing my running shoes that day.

Favorite nonprogramming language?

German. Knowledge of German allows for really great cross-linguistic puns. For instance, when leaving a German-enabled friend, you can say "Spaeter, gator" and get a good laugh for your efforts.

Favorite place to visit?

Not the woodshed!

Do you prefer Next Generation or Original Star Trek?

Next generation. While watching Star Trek NG, computer people know that no matter how bad the situation appears, Data will be ok because "They always back up their data".

Puns: good or bad?

Yes.

Coffee or tea?

Coffee, but I think that my body has really had more than enough coffee. I'm trying to get adjusted to using water as a stimulant.

Favorite beverage?

Orangina. It's a French grapefruit drink that I developed a taste for.

Write the following code in C++ in your favorite coding style:

    def countOutLoud
        for i := 1 to 100 do
            print "Number: " . i

// Don't you dare write code like this in one of my classes!
void countOutLoud() {
   for( int i=1; i<=100 && cout<<"Number:"<< i<< endl; i++ )
        ; 
}

Python or Perl?

Perl conjures images of knitting. Python conjures images of a long fire hose like anaconda with a big lump in the middle. In a strictly computer context, perl syntax drives me a bit crazy. I've never programmed python, but the descriptions make it sound much easier. I guess that I would have to vote for PHP.

Do you pronounce SQL as "sequel" or do you say each letter?

I've never done a serious statistical frquency analysis of my usage, but I think that I lean towards saying each letter.

What's your opinion of SQL as a language?

Sure beats some of the older alternative approaches. Every database had its own unique language. Uniqueness can become too much of a good thing.